On Friday, the Obama administration issued its final rule for the 2016 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule that includes several health IT provisions.
The fee schedule – the first since repeal of the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula and enactment of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) – includes changes to payment policies, modifications to misvalued codes, and updates to quality performance metrics under the PQRS, the Medicare Shared Savings Program, and Physician Compare, among others. (Internal Medicine News, 10/31)

Revenue cycle management in many medical practices will soon have to take into account the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS). PQRS uses payment adjustments to encourage promoting of quality information by both group practices and eligible professionals (EPs).

On Monday, November 2, President Obama signed into law the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015. Among its provisions, the two-year budget deal sets 2016 Medicare Part B premium rates, changes Medicaid rebate policy, repeals the ACA auto-enrollment requirement, and provides for a new Medicare payment policy for new outpatient providers.

Ten years ago, it was easy for doctors to keep a professional distance between themselves and their patients. They could have an unlisted personal phone number, for starters, which would leave the office number as the only publicly available way to contact you. Nowadays, doctors are personally available online 24 hours a day - if they have a social media presence. Here's how physicians can adapt and manage their social media presence without hurting patient relationships or sacrificing their own privacy.

Revenue cycle management is not something that most medical professionals understand, but it is a concept that is very near and dear to the bottom line of each medical practice. These days, medical practice management is being split up into two segments: managing the daily operations of the office and managing the way the practice does business. These are two separate functions and they both require full-time attention, which is why RCM outsourcing is on the rise.

Medical providers make most of their revenue by successfully processing claims, and claims mistakes affect the bottom line. Fortunately, many claims are preventable and recoverable. Successfully preventing billing mistakes and appealing a denied or rejected claim often has to do with the quality of the medical billing software a practice uses.

Future hospital patients may have walls to thank for saving their lives. The new Sherwin Williams 59-color Paint Shield line promises to kill nearly 100 percent of several types of infection-causing bacteria up to two hours after exposure, and lasts for four years.

The product, dubbed Paint Shield, earned certification from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for killing more than 99.9% of bacteria such as Staph, E. coli, and MRSA, Steve Revnew, senior vice president of product innovation for Sherwin-Williams said in an interview.

Healthcare revenue cycle management will undergo changes in coming years as fee-for-service payment models give way to more value-based payment models. The Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) began in 2007 as an incentive-based reporting program for eligible healthcare providers to report quality data to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) through Medicare claims forms.

Data breaches are on the rise and healthcare is not immune, says Michelle Caswell, JD, Senior Director of Legal and Compliance for Clearwater Compliance LLC. Healthcare organizations hear about the vulnerability of protected health information, but don't do much more than hope that they won't be the next target.

With Halloween just around the corner, you surely have seen the various blog posts with Halloween ICD-10 codes. Since ICD-10 go live was this year, we decided to take it to another level. We thought we'd pair a few spooky codes with a costume. On the off chance you still haven't decided what you'll dress up as this year, feel free to snatch up one from this list of the top 5 ICD-10 codes with costumes.

EHR stands for electronic health record and is essentially the digital version of a patient's paper chart. An EHR is a real-time record that can be made available instantly and securely to those with authorization. EHRs contain patients' medical and treatment histories and more. They may also include diagnoses, treatment plans, immunization records, allergy information, radiology images, and test results.

You might be wondering why hundreds of practices experienced a smooth transition to ICD-10 but your practice didn't. Was it really that easy? Did you miss something? The ICD-10 transition was the biggest change to healthcare in decades. Why is my practice the only one struggling?

With children back in school and people spending more time indoors, it's only a matter of time before flu cases start showing up in your practice. Of course, your best coping mechanism is doing what you can to prevent flu transmission in the first place rather than having to go into reactive mode after an influx of cases. For most practices, this means developing a plan to get patients vaccinated, but you need to define your plans in greater detail.

A dozen electronic health record vendors have agreed to adopt a set of metrics and engage in ongoing reporting to help gauge the U.S. health care system's progress toward achieving interoperability, Modern Healthcare reports (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 10/19).

Attitudes toward health records have changed among patients and care providers in recent years. Once shrouded in mystery, the personal medical record is becoming more open to patients through online portals that let them review, and in some cases add to the information contained in them. EHR systems have changed the way providers and patients communicate and manage healthcare outcomes.